Re: Xft

From: "Mark H. Wilkinson" <mhw+wily@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To: Wily Fans mailing list <wilyfans@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: 29 Jul 2002 16:01:19 +0100

On Fri, 2002-07-19 at 22:19, ozan s yigit wrote:
>
> oh, ok. i'm all for getting up to date with current plan9, including
> color.
>
> yes, mark wilkinson is on the list, and if he is near his keyboard, he
> may chime in regarding 9libs soon.
Updating libXg to use the newer Xft font handling system looks like a
good idea. There seem to be a few different things associated with this:
* Using Xft to draw the text. I believe that this is what Tor's patch
does from a quick look through it.
* Updating the libXg interfaces to use sub-pixel co-ordinates.
* Updating the libXg interfaces to those used in the new Plan 9 graphics
library.
* Updating the client applications (wily, sam, 9term, anything else?) to
use the new API. Given that both sam and 9term use libframe that might
not be overly difficult.
I don't know whether the second and third of these are related: I
haven't looked at Plan 9 for a while to see how the new graphics library
works, or read the manual pages or anything. Anyway, I'd be interested
in at least finding out how much work is likely to be involved in these
steps.
One big question is whether we will lose portability by doing this. One
of the nice features of sam is the ability to run it on old systems, and
I'd prefer not to loose that. My understanding is that the new Plan 9
graphics library is sufficiently different from libg that they could
co-exist within 9libs (ie. libXg would remain, but a new library would
implement the new API). There was some discussion when Bengt and I
released sam-9libs of using some Bell Labs code to build an X port of
the new Plan 9 graphics library, but I don't think I've got the time or
the X expertise to do the work.
-Mark.